Angels from the realms of glory

Rich in both talent and achievement, the one-time journalist and editor James Montgomery is said to have responded to a questioner by saying that he expected to be remembered only for a few of his hymns. If that story has the ring of truth, here is one hymn whose popularity fulfils at least the positive part of that forecast. Appropriately enough, it began life in his newspaper The Sheffield Iris, in its Christmas Eve edition in 1816: ‘Heralds … now proclaim’ etc. It gathered momentum by its inclusion in the prohibited 1819 edition of Thomas Cotterill’s Selection of Psalms and Hymns, also from Sheffield; with small changes it next appeared in the author’s own The Christian Psalmist and in a further Christmas anthology, both in 1825. The text takes us from creation to final judgement; ‘Ye who sang creation’s story’ (the original line 2) is a veiled reference to Job 38.7. This stz and the next are based on Luke 2, and the 3rd on Matthew 2; a 4th, not included here, refers to Simeon and Anna: ‘Saints before the altar bending, watching long in hope and fear …’ The ‘Sinners’ stz is more often omitted, as in GH (which prints only 3) but not CH or PHRW. As indicated, ‘Though an infant now we view him’ is not Montgomery’s, but was transferred by the 1928 Oxford Book of Carols to this hymn, from another appearing in the same 1825 Christmas Box. This may be seen as vandalism or genius; in this book as in others, suitability takes preference over authenticity; it makes a fine and appropriate finale.

Except, that is, for the famous chorus when the tune IRIS is used. Linda Mawson has arranged this old French carol tune for the present book, with its ‘child-like innocent jollity’ (Bernard Massey). For many, even with stz 4 included, this will be the inevitable music. If, however, the alternative LEWISHAM (290, as in PHRW) is noticed, we shall have a hymn which more truly reflects the author’s intention—even with stz 5! The words will hold our attention if we are not concentrating on an intake of breath for the much repeated and sometimes confusing refrain. It is hardly too much to say that the two tunes make, of the one text, two different hymns.

IRIS has been called the currently best-known of all French (or Flemish) carol tunes. It is found in print twice in 1855, but may be up to a century earlier. It was used by G R Woodward for his Shepherds in the fields abiding; the only line taken from Montgomery in a carol concluding, ‘Thanks, good herdmen; true your story …’. The 1951 Congregational Praise boldly retains this pairing, and provides Montgomery’s hymn with three musical options,

b Irvine, Ayrshire, Scotland 1771, d Sheffield 1854. His father John was converted through the ministry of John Cennick qv. James, the eldest son, was educated first at the Moravian centre at Fulneck nr Leeds, which expelled him in 1787 for wasting time writing poetry. By this time his parents had left England for mission work in the West Indies. In later life he regularly revisited the school; but having run away from a Mirfield bakery apprenticeship, failed to find a publisher in London, and lost both parents, he served in a chandler’s shop at Doncaster before moving to Sheffield, where from 1792 onwards he worked in journalism. Initially a contributor to the Sheffield Register and clerk to its radical editor, he soon became Asst Editor and (in 1796) Editor, changing its name to the Sheffield Iris. Imprisoned twice in York for his political articles, he was condemned by one jury as ‘a wicked, malicious and seditious person who has attempted to stir up discontent among his Majesty’s subjects’. In his 40s he found a renewed Christian commitment through restored links with the Moravians; championed the Bible Society, Sunday schools, overseas missions, the anti-slavery campaign and help for boy chimney-sweeps, refusing to advertise state lotteries which he called ‘a national nuisance’. He later moved from the Wesleyans to St George’s church and supported Thos Cotterill’s campaign to legalise hymns in the CofE. He wrote some 400, in familiar metres, published in Cotterill’s 1819 Selection and his own Songs of Zion, 1822; Christian Psalmist, or Hymns Selected and Original, in 1825—355 texts plus 5 doxologies, with a seminal ‘Introductory Essay’ on hymnology—and Original Hymns for Public, Private and Social Devotion, 1853. 1833 saw the publication of his Royal Institution lectures on Poetry and General Literature.

In the 1825 Essay he comments on many authors, notably commending ‘the piety of Watts, the ardour of Wesley, and the tenderness of Doddridge’. Like many contemporary editors he was not averse to making textual changes in the hymns of others. He produced several books of verse, from juvenilia (aged 10–13) to Prison Amusements from York and The World before the Flood. Asked which poems would last, he said, ‘None, sir, nothing— except perhaps a few of my hymns’. He wrote that he ‘would rather be the anonymous author of a few hymns, which should thus become an imperishable inheritance to the people of God, than bequeath another epic poem to the world’ on a par with Homer, Virgil or Milton. John Ellerton called him ‘our first hymnologist’; many see him as the 19th century’s finest hymn-writer, while Julian regards his earlier work very highly, the later hymns less so. 20 of his texts including Psalm versions are in the 1916 Congregational Hymnary, and 22 in its 1951 successor Congregational Praise; there are 17 in the 1965 Anglican Hymn Book and 26 in CH. In 2004, Alan Gaunt found 64 of them in current books, and drew attention to one not in use: the vivid account of Christ’s suffering and death in The morning dawns upon the place where Jesus spent the night in prayer. See also Peter Masters in Men of Purpose (1980); Bernard Braley in Hymnwriters 3 (1991) and Alan Gaunt in HSB242 (Jan 2005). Nos.152, 197, 198, 350*, 418, 484, 507, 534, 544, 610, 612, 641, 657*, 897, 959.

(not in Praise! index). The first complete book published by the Religious Tract Society, decades before the Victorian (and post-Victorian) flood of carol-books, was this seasonal assortment including ‘Three New Carols’. It has bequeathed to us 4 enduring lines, usually comprising as here a concluding stz for no.350*. (Whether or not in conscious rivalry, another anonymous volume called The Good Christmas Box, used and found ‘valuable’ in 1928 by P Dearmer and others, was published in 1846–47, a words-only collection of some genuine folk-carols. By way of contrast, A Christmas Box—probably late 19th-c—is an attack on Christmas for its paganism by S Cozens of Rehoboth Chapel, the Particular Calvinistic Baptist Ch in Shadwell, E London.)